It’s harvest time and we are immersed in a rollicking, gluttonous orgy of tomatoes
Dan Brawner
August 22, 2007
I am awash in tomatoes. Tomatoes are coming from everywhere. Friends, neighbors and relatives bring bags of plump, ripe, juicy home-grown “beefsteak” tomatoes, oblong Roma tomatoes and those little cherry tomatoes that burst in your mouth and squirt joyously across the table. I am inundated, infatuated, intoxicated with tomatoes. I am in a feeding frenzy. Like the mad, ravenous shark in the movie “Jaws”, everywhere I turn, I see red.
I know this sounds gluttonous. But that’s okay, because it’s harvest time and it is traditional to gulp down perishable produce when it’s in season. In fact, this time of year, gluttony isn’t only acceptable, it’s a virtue. What a shame it would be to let such good food go to waste!
Speaking of virtue, our Puritan ancestors shunned tomatoes, believing they were an aphrodisiac. This may be because of a mixup in the name. In Italian, “Pomme de’ Moors” means, apple of the Moors. But to the French, it sounded like, “Pomme d’Amore” or apple of love. The name of this voluptuous vegetable has at times been synonymous with an attractive woman, as in “She’s a hot tomato!”
Tomatoes belong to the genus “Lycopersicon” and, according to German tradition, were used in witchcraft to attract werewolves. (And I thought all that howling at night was the neighbor’s dog!) Tomatoes are related to nightshade and henbane and were for many years thought to be deadly poison. There is a story about a British spy who tried to murder George Washington by feeding him an entree laced with what he believed was a lethal dose of tomatoes. Later, Thomas Jefferson encountered tomatoes in Europe and brought back seeds for his own garden, to the horror of his neighborhood.
August is the month for tomato festivals, including the Pittston Tomato Festival in Pittston, PA and the one in Fairfield, CA. The most famous is the La Tomatina in Valencia, Spain, where for over 60 years, residents and tourists of this town of 9,000 have happily hurled as much as 200,000 pounds of tomatoes at each other, in what has been called the biggest food fight in the world.
Plastic sheets cover nearby buildings to protect them from the tomato carnage. Photos of the festivity, showing participants drenched in juice with red blobs flying through the air, look like scenes from a particularly gruesome horror movie. There are several theories about how La Tomatina began. Initiated after World War II, the tomato fight might have started, like fireworks, as a playful parody of war itself.
La Tomatina sounds like a blast. But at my house, the only place I intend to throw tomatoes is into my mouth. I don’t care if it calls every werewolf in the county, I’m going to enjoy this while it lasts.
I know this sounds gluttonous. But that’s okay, because it’s harvest time and it is traditional to gulp down perishable produce when it’s in season. In fact, this time of year, gluttony isn’t only acceptable, it’s a virtue. What a shame it would be to let such good food go to waste!
Speaking of virtue, our Puritan ancestors shunned tomatoes, believing they were an aphrodisiac. This may be because of a mixup in the name. In Italian, “Pomme de’ Moors” means, apple of the Moors. But to the French, it sounded like, “Pomme d’Amore” or apple of love. The name of this voluptuous vegetable has at times been synonymous with an attractive woman, as in “She’s a hot tomato!”
Tomatoes belong to the genus “Lycopersicon” and, according to German tradition, were used in witchcraft to attract werewolves. (And I thought all that howling at night was the neighbor’s dog!) Tomatoes are related to nightshade and henbane and were for many years thought to be deadly poison. There is a story about a British spy who tried to murder George Washington by feeding him an entree laced with what he believed was a lethal dose of tomatoes. Later, Thomas Jefferson encountered tomatoes in Europe and brought back seeds for his own garden, to the horror of his neighborhood.
August is the month for tomato festivals, including the Pittston Tomato Festival in Pittston, PA and the one in Fairfield, CA. The most famous is the La Tomatina in Valencia, Spain, where for over 60 years, residents and tourists of this town of 9,000 have happily hurled as much as 200,000 pounds of tomatoes at each other, in what has been called the biggest food fight in the world.
Plastic sheets cover nearby buildings to protect them from the tomato carnage. Photos of the festivity, showing participants drenched in juice with red blobs flying through the air, look like scenes from a particularly gruesome horror movie. There are several theories about how La Tomatina began. Initiated after World War II, the tomato fight might have started, like fireworks, as a playful parody of war itself.
La Tomatina sounds like a blast. But at my house, the only place I intend to throw tomatoes is into my mouth. I don’t care if it calls every werewolf in the county, I’m going to enjoy this while it lasts.
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